Mike Holmgren, who watched the Browns win nine games and lose 23 in his two full seasons as president, is now saying he should have coached the team.
Holmgren made the revelation to Peter King of Sports Illustrated in King’s lengthy Monday Morning Quarterback column.
Former Browns owner Randy Lerner hired Holmgren late in 2009 to preside over the entire organization, both the football and business side of the organization.
Holmgren coached the Packers and Seahawks a total of 17 seasons from 1992 to 2008 and took his teams to a total of three Super Bowls — two with Green Bay and one with Seattle. He was a combined 161-111 with the two teams. He last coached the Seahawks in 2008.
“I really just should have coached the team, but [Lerner] didn’t want me to,” Holmgren, 65, told King. “At that particular time, I wasn’t ready to do it again. I thought I’d be shortchanging the organization.”
Instead, Holmgren retained Eric Mangini, who won the last four games in 2009 to finish 5-11. Mangini went 5-11 again in 2010 and was fired.
Holmgren had another chance to name himself head coach. Instead, he hired Pat Shurmur, who went 5-11 in 2011.
Lerner pulled a surprise in August 2012 and began selling the team to current owner Jimmy Haslam. That spelled the end for Holmgren and Shurmur.
Holmgren, perceived as a quarterback guru because of his success with Joe Montana and Steve Young in San Francisco, Brett Favre in Green Bay and Matt Hasselbeck in Seattle, delivered four quarterbacks to the Browns in his brief time in Cleveland — Jake Delhomme, Seneca Wallace, Colt McCoy and Brandon Weeden. All failed miserably and helped grease the skids for Mangini and Shurmur.
If Holmgren saw the quarterbacks he acquired could not produce as they continued to lose, he kept that knowledge to himself.
“Now — and this is very, very important — once he’s with you, you never, ever let anyone believe he’s not the right guy, not the quarterback of the future,” Holmgren told the website. “In the building, obviously, that’s a given. But in public, too — every time you talk about him, he’s your guy.”
Holmgren was squeezed out midway through 2012. Ironically, Joe Banner, who was the squeezer on that move, was squeezed out in similar fashion by Haslam in February along with Mike Lombardi, the former general manager, who lasted just over a year.
The stint with the Browns was not Holmgren’s first failed attempt at running an organization. He resigned from the Packers after seven seasons to become executive vice president/general manager and head coach of the Seahawks in 1999. Seattle won the AFC West with a 9-7 record that year but missed the playoffs the next three years.
The Seahawks were 7-9 in 2002, Seattle’s first season in the NFC, and after that season, Holmgren was stripped of his general manager duties.
So now, four seasons after Holmgren took power, the Browns are still hunting for a quarterback. This time it’s Ray Farmer doing the hunting along with first-year head coach Mike Pettine.
Meanwhile, Holmgren is enjoying retirement and, presumably, to use his words, still sipping those drinks with little umbrellas in them whenever he gets the urge.

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About the Author

Jeff has covered the Cleveland Browns since 1981. He also covers the Lake Erie Monsters of the American Hockey League and the Cleveland Gladiators in the Arena Football League. Reach the author at jschudel@news-herald.com
or follow Jeff on Twitter: @jsbrownsinsider.